What We’re Talking About:

Lawyers know that pro se litigants have fools for clients. However, when it comes to pro se web marketing, well, that’s a different story. Over at SearchEngineLand, Andrew Shotland walks through a great example of a client who lost search visibility due to site redesign: I was prompted to write this because we recently took […]

Here’s an issue that surfaces from time to time, particularly in the legal web marketing sphere: I have a website and content management system that I am happy with. However, I don’t have anything to compare them to and I wonder if there might be a comparable product for a lower price or a better […]

Last week I was in Dallas talking local search and social media. The gist of that talk was that social media can be a powerful tool for improving local search ranking factors. You can reviews the slides here: Going Local with Social from Gyi Tsakalakis Admittedly, without the talk or a transcript, the slides are […]

If part of your firm’s marketing plan includes earning new clients from organic search, you probably track things like your sites’ traffic, rankings and inquiries. You might also track your online competitors. After all, competitive analysis can be a very effective way to identify what other people are doing that is working. But, if you’re […]

While we regularly point out the issues, problems and limitations of rank tracking, lawyers love to spot-check their search engine rankings. By now, you probably know that search engine rankings fluctuate a lot. Here’s an example for rankings for a popular legal directory’s rankings for the keyword ‘attorney’ between 10/31 and 11/2: You also probably […]

Back in May, Google announced that they had upgraded their system to render web pages with CSS and JavaScript turned on. They recently updated their technical webmaster guidelines to reflect this change. Interestingly, they also noted: For optimal rendering and indexing, our new guideline specifies that you should allow Googlebot access to the JavaScript, CSS, […]

With Moz’s release of the 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors, I thought I’d take a moment to share some of my observations about the local search landscape as it relates to lawyers. Disclaimer: I had the privilege of participating in the Moz survey. The image at the top of this post was generated on 10/22/2014. […]

The above image shows some recent data I pulled from Google Webmaster Tools (GWT). We don’t rely on GWT data for reporting, but regularly refer to it internally to analyze trends. But I’m becoming skeptical about the reliability of the data even for that very limited purpose. You see, I know that there are clicks […]

The image below is a screenshot of a Google search engine result page for the query, “personal injury lawyer in philadelphia.” It was performed in an incognito Chrome browser with location set to Philadelphia, PA on September 29, 2014. We have highlighted the organic results from the SERP below: We also labeled the listings based […]

By now, you’ve probably heard something about Google’s recent Pigeon update. In short, Pigeon has rocked local search results. In many instances, it’s rocked them for the worse. SEL has a great Pigeon expert round-up. Here are some of the Pigeon-impacts that the legal SEO community has witnessed. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of pre and […]

Over at Inside AdWords, Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian has posted some additional insights about Quality Score and the AdWords Auction. Google users want ads they see to be relevant. They don’t want to be bothered by ads that aren’t closely related to what they are searching for. – Hal Varian (Chief Economist, Google) Traditional […]

Here are just a few quick SEO bullets that attorneys should work through to improve their visibility in organic search results. Your Audience Do you understand who your target audience is (i.e. demographic and pyschographic information)? Do you understand how your target users search engines and the internet to find information relevant to your practice? […]

Use Google Webmaster Tools to see who links to your pages and how they link. This is one way to judge the effectiveness of your SEO activities. We briefly discussed how understanding the way that people are linking to your pages & posts is one way you can tell whether what you are publishing online […]

The process for rehabilitating your website from spammy SEO practices can be a long and arduous journey. In many instances, attorneys are better served to simply start over. In case you missed it, search engines are evolving. And while black hat and spam “still work” in many cases, there is no question that a lot […]

DMOZ is one of the largest and oldest human-edited directory of the Web. It is maintained by a global community of volunteer editors. If you’ve been around long enough, you might remember it as the Open Directory Project (ODP). DMOZ used to be on the short-list of places you could add your business to get […]

Still wondering how to optimize your pages? There’s a ton of information out there about optimizing web pages. Fortunately, most of what you need to know can be found at Moz, especially here and here. While this is likely to confuse Google about what this page is about, I thought I’d mark up Rand’s perfectly […]

One way you can tell whether what you are publishing online is resonating with your audience is whether or not they are linking to it. Lawyers often ask us how they can tell whether their SEO strategies “are working.” Ultimately, it comes down to whether you are earning meaningful attention from organic search that is […]

What can lawyers learn about their potential clients’ local search behavior from Google’s latest study? You don’t need to be a search scientist to know that people search for local businesses online. In fact, you probably know this from personal experience. In an effort to better understand consumer local search behavior, Google recently conducted, and […]

You should already know that: Rankings don’t necessarily translate to traffic, which doesn’t necessarily translate to inquiries, which don’t necessarily translate into new clients. Nonetheless, understanding how these metrics can work in concert is your best chance of answering the question: Is this working? Rankings Let me make this easy for you: Don’t focus on […]

Think people don’t trust online reviews? Don’t be so sure. Last week, I had the honor of sharing a stage with Nifty Law President Mike Ramsey. Mike is one of a very few people I would trust to market my own law practice online. The image at the top of this post comes from the […]